Texas Flood Survivors Recount Night of Terror at Waterfront Campgrounds

It was advertised as a “waterfront getaway,” a tranquil campground spanning 65 acres along the shaded banks of the Guadalupe River. But a week after floodwaters surged over the riverbanks, all that remains of the HTR TX Hill Country R.V. Park & Campground are a barren expanse of dirt and gravel and the haunting outlines of foundations where “deluxe” cabins once stood.

The property, on the border of Kerrville and Ingram in Central Texas, all but vanished in the violence of the Independence Day flooding. Entire cabins were ripped off their foundations. As they lurched downstream, the owner of a neighboring R.V. park watched in horror while people trapped inside screamed for help.

The half-mile stretch of land occupied by the two campgrounds appears to have been one of the deadliest sites along the 250-mile river during the flash flood, with at least 28 people confirmed dead or declared missing, according to interviews, local news reports and social media posts.

Other zones of devastation in the predawn hours of July 4 have drawn more attention, notably Camp Mystic, a summer camp further upriver where 27 campers and staff members have been reported dead and six are still missing.

The company that owns the campground, HTR, has not said publicly how many people were missing from its property after the flood.

“We have the number, but we are not releasing it,” said Jacqueline Miller, a spokeswoman for the company.

Ms. Miller said the campground, which offered cabins, R.V. hookups and tent sites, had 44 reservations on the night of the flood. Several people who were there that night said the company sent an urgent text message just after 4:45 a.m., saying the fire department had ordered those at the campground to evacuate.

Eric Steele, 32, got the text right away but said floodwaters were already threatening the property. He had booked a stay at the campground with three generations of his family, and he described it as bursting with festive customers on the evening of July 3.

When the river swiftly rose overnight, it turned into a scene of chaos, with people smashing through the windows of their cabins to escape, emergency workers trying to tie fire hoses together as makeshift rescue ropes and people honking their car horns incessantly to wake others up.

“You could hear the zapping” of electrical wires coming into contact with water, said Daryl Kallio, 43, who raced out of his trailer with his wife and son.

For Mr. Steele, the night ended in tragedy. His sister, Tanya Ramsey, and her husband, Jeff, were staying in a camper close to the river and were carried away. The couple called him pleading for help.

“They were begging me to save them, and I couldn’t do anything,” he said.

He drove as far as he could toward their campsite, then walked through thigh-high water until he couldn’t go farther. On the phone, his sister and brother-in-law were praying together and asked him to tell their children that they loved them. Mr. Steele called 911, then returned to the call with his sister. Then the phone went dead.

The couple’s dog, Chloe, was found alive about four miles down the river. Ms. Ramsey’s body was recovered, but her husband was still missing as of Thursday afternoon.

Another woman staying at the HTR campsite, Devyn Smith, was found alive 15 miles downstream late on the morning of July 4. She was clinging to the upper branches of a tall tree, and her dramatic rescue was captured on video.

The campground sits on land designated as a flood plain. When a local developer, Robert Mobley, bought the property in 1987, a dilapidated R.V. park already existed there, according to his daughter, Ashley Ann Middleton.

Mr. Mobley presented development plans for the area to the Ingram City Council in 1989. An article in a local newspaper then noted that Ingram officials had “feared someone using the property could be trapped by unpredictable Guadalupe floodwaters.”

The Mobley family was aware of the risks of rising water, Ms. Middleton said, recalling several times over the years when she had to get up in the middle of the night to knock on trailer doors and tell occupants of the campground to evacuate. The family installed a siren set off by rising water, she said, and built a steel bridge connecting camping spots on an island with the shore.

“If there was rain in the forecast, we were watching it. And we always had a plan to get people out,” Ms. Middleton said. But she added that “nobody could have prepared” for last week’s flood.

Mr. Mobley died in 2021, and his family sold the property to HTR, which owns campsites across the country.

Ms. Miller, the spokeswoman for HTR, said the type of flooding that occurred on July 4 was unprecedented. “However, our property does have an emergency response plan in place, and they did follow it,” she added. She declined to provide details.

Among others swept away from the campsite were Richard Pagard, 71, and his wife, Carol Andrews, who had been staying at HTR with their dog, Poppy. It had been a temporary spot as they looked for a new home. They had sold their place in Athens, Texas, and were searching for a place in the Hill Country for cooler weather and its beautiful scenery, their daughters said.

Both of their bodies have been recovered.

Also swept away were Jeff Wilson, a teacher at the Kingwood Park High School in the Houston area, his wife, Amber, and their son, Shiloh.

Repeated requests to Kerr County officials for information about the number of missing at the HTR campground went unanswered.

Those who survived at the side-by-side campgrounds that morning say they were surprised that a wall of water appeared so suddenly — and hours after the storm had begun.

Justin Brown, who lived with his two young daughters in a trailer at the Blue Oak R.V. Park, the campground next to HTR, said he was jolted out of bed by a thunderclap.

“That was a warning from God,” he said of the thunder, which struck around 2 a.m. and knocked a loosely fixed set of blinds off a window in his trailer. “I had never heard thunder like that in all my life.”

Mr. Brown, an experienced kayaker, checked on the level of the Guadalupe after the lightning roused him and found that the water was as low as it had been the evening before.

Lorena Guillen, the owner of the Blue Oak, said she also watched the river attentively. Hard rain had come down at about 1 a.m. At 2:08 a.m., according to her phone log, she called the Kerr County sheriff’s office and asked if there was reason for concern. The person who answered the phone told her they had no information about flooding, Ms. Guillen said.

The river was low enough that she was able to easily drive across a concrete causeway to an island where a family was camping. She saw no reason for alarm and returned to her home at the edge of the R.V. park to try to get back to sleep.

Sometime around 3:30 a.m., Ms. Guillen was roused by the flashing lights of emergency vehicles. Emergency responders were trying to get rescue boats into the water. She ran to the trailers in her park and banged on doors until the occupants — construction workers, a house cleaner and a cook among them — woke up.

All but four guests that night survived, she said. The campers on the island, Jack and Julia Anderson Burgess and two of their children, were washed away.

At 5:07 a.m., Ms. Guillen used her phone to film HTR cabins pitching and bobbing downriver. More than anything else that night, she said, the panicked cries from inside those cabins will haunt her.

Ms. Guillen says that in the days after the flood, the manager of the HTR campsite told her that the company had counted 38 adults and five children missing from the property.

For those who lost loved ones at the campgrounds, the search has been agonizing.

“We have been to morgue after morgue, medical examiner after medical examiner,” said Ryen Brake, whose grandparents, Robert and Joni Brake, had been staying in Cabin No. 47.

By Thursday, the family had learned that both their bodies had been found.

Kassie Bracken contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett and Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.

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